


Found

by Coldest_Fire



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Also the voices might be a metaphor but can be literal if you like, Don’t worry he doesn’t die, Hearing Voices, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, again restating that this is an AU and he lives, dont know if I have to warn for how he does it but I sure am going ti, guys this is dark but the author is fine i promise, its a long ventfic about what it’s like being suicidal, suicide by pills, this is in connor’s Head the day he dies in canon but he doesn’t die here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 04:45:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15477969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: Today, his thoughts are an ulcer bleeding deep and low in his stomach, eating him ways no one sees, though he’s used to being invisible through his reputation.An account of what the day Connor thought would be his last is like. He doesn’t die at the end I promise.





	Found

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. 
> 
> If you’re reading this, and what Connor’s feeling sounds familiar, know that I am always willing to talk, but I’m also not a mental health professional. If you need a friend, then maybe this is it, and I can be that, but I would strongly reccomend, as I did, getting some kind of help.
> 
> I’d like to thank my best friend, my girlfriend, my family and my counsellor for the fact that I’m still here. 
> 
> If you are suicidal when you read this, there is another way, I swear, I’ve lived it. That’s what this story is supposed to mean. So here https://www.google.ca/amp/codedredalert.tumblr.com/post/109005732295/helpline-masterlist/amp is a link to a post on suicide hotlines by country. Please, I swear, it gets better.

Today, his thoughts are an ulcer bleeding deep and low in his stomach, eating him ways no one sees, though he’s used to being invisible through his reputation. The only words spoken to him are “Pass the milk” and he’s not sure Zoe even knows she’s speaking to him. There’s a voice in his head and it tells him that that’s the last time he’ll pass Zoe the milk, that’s the last time he’ll slink out the back door to get to school without her. There’s three more joints left in his pocket, and then two and a half by the time he’s still at school, and that’s all that’s left. It lives to tell him how many times he has left of everything in the world, how many classes he’ll skip, how many pages he has left in his obscure horror story, and one more car trip. It burns him from the inside, burns him from the bottle of pills in his pocket. 

Cynthia Murphy is emblazoned on the label, and he feels guilty for that. He’s the fucked up kid, the reason his mom can’t just sleep. Maybe it’s poetic justice or some shit that these pills are in his hands because he made them necessary, but Larry’s credit card would have bought them for him if not. Maybe last night was the last time Larry will ever call him dramatic. He gets a tinge of satisfaction, thinking that Larry will know, after this time, after tonight that he wasn’t being dramatic. He meant every word the time he was a kid, and he told them, in eighth grade that he wanted to kill himself. They sent him on a weekend retreat for troubled kids.

The few people that are supposed to don’t see him, don’t see him screaming on the inside for them to just see what this is doing. The entire day, it’s like his insides died before he can. His hands are pale and shaky, and his guts feel necrotic, like he’s a zombie in the inside, and it’s slowly infecting him. He is alone behind his rep as the school psycho, with two voices, one telling him, as he spills black coffee all over his legs that his shaky hands have wasted half his last cup of coffee, and one with a voice like the sleek edge of a razor blade, that chants in his ear. It’s always there, like the stalker in the horror movies, always outside the windows, and now it’s standing behind him, chanting “Kill, kill, kill,” but it’ll make him do it. Its voice makes his wrists itch to be torn open, or to open the bottle and sink into oblivion right here outside the school, but that would be dramatic. It tells him to do it, it screams and it screams in a thousand demonic voices, and it’s getting so loud he can’t drown it out, but the thought of obeying it makes him shake harder, and his mouth fill with saliva that tastes like pennies.

He better not throw the pills up again like last time, when he took too many. It tells him that he fucked up, that he’ll fuck up living, but not dying, it tells him, in the softest tone it can muster that he’ll be great at dying, just take the pills slowly, so he doesn’t immediately vomit, and then cut, one last time. It’s easy, it says, like falling asleep. He knows it’s lying. He knows that it’s worse than that, dying has to be, right? And he needs to not do it. He needs any reason not to do it. Another voice is what he needs, a friend, one to talk all night so he’s not alone with his demons, both standing behind him. 

When he enters the computer lab, and is reminded that he’s never going to smell all the printers office smell again, he is a man fighting for his life but he doesn’t make a sound, until he sees another. He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t ask for help when it’s so loud he can hardly hear himself think over what he has to do. And why should he? Signing Evan’s cast is dramatic, it says, in his father’s disapproving tone, but it feels like leaving some proof he existed, as he desperately says “so we can both pretend to have friends” and means so he can pretend anyone sees him. He pretends this is his friend, that tonight he can go to the blue striped boy’s house, and they’ll stay up all night, and talk about nothing. His ribs ache for want of his own lies. Maybe he starts to believe them enough to stake his life on them, there could be a chance. Maybe this boy can be louder than the voices, or loud enough to stop him. He burns for it. 

And then he picks up the letter, one so like the notes he decided against writing. “This isn’t going to be an amazing week or an amazing year, because why would it be?” But then he sees her name, and is sears holes in his chest like a meteor shower. Zoe. “Because there’s Zoey and all my hope is pinned on Zoe.” and it burns like he’s a limestone gargoyle and he’s getting hit by acid rain. Because it’s always Zoe, his parents have time for Zoe, and they’d never throw her away at rehab, or call her struggles needless drama. Because the name fills his blood with acid, because there’s Zoe, and he always feels like he’s never going to be enough, and now even his last chance is showing him. He’s the dysfunctional psycho, the branch to prune off the Murphy tree, and he’s their shameful secret addict son. He knows they all hate him. He feels it when they send him off, and when Zoe gets up early to avoid riding to school with him. This is the last person, one voice says, that is going to choose her, while the other grows louder still. 

It’s ear shattering. It’s just telling him to die, telling him he has to, and he wants to get high. He wants to get so high he doesn’t come down, leaves his body, and doesn’t return. He loses his mind, and says some paranoid bullshit that he knows is bullshit, but it feels so real, the demons think it’s real. But instead of dying yet, he goes to get ice cream, and smokes his final joint and a half, cause it quiets them, and he lets chocolate cascade over his tongue, though everything tastes like grey. It’s his last meal on death row, and he eats it slowly, because he has to take the pills after he eats it, because he’s prolonging it. He doesn’t want to die, he just really doesn’t want to live anymore. He wants anything to change that. 

He drives to the state park, gets out of his car and walks into the forest off the trail. They shouldn’t have to find his corpse. He sits beneath a tree, and his fingers shake with finality as he reaches the last tree, sits for the last time and feels hot tears starting to slip from his eyes, melting their way through his cheeks. He takes the first pill, as his mouth tastes like copper, and his hands are so shaky he almost dumps the pills over into the grass. He’s so tired, but he doesn’t want to sleep anymore. He doesn’t want to be dead, he just wants to be anything. He takes another. He feels his chest gasping in breaths, but he’s starting to feel like he’s under water, it’s starting to work. He hears crunching on the trail, and an irrational part of his brain hopes it’s his mom. He wants it to be her, he wants her to get hysterical, no matter how annoying he thinks that is, and to call 911. He wants someone to see, as he swallows three more all at once. 

He hears a voice behind him, saying his name as the voice, the one that sounds like demons, the one that tells him to die sounds like a soft angel, and tells him well done, and that’s more terrifying than years of it stalking him, years of seeing it in windows and mirrors and the back seat. It sounding like a friend is terrifying. “Connor?” the real voice repeats as the edges of his vision feather, and the voice congratulates him in dulcet tones. It ends here tonight. The desperation to be seen, the loneliness, the anger, the isolation and the chance it could all be different, it ends here. 

“Connor!” 

Until it doesn’t. Until that crunching speeds up as he falls over sideways, and his eyes close. Until that voice is the boy from the computer lab, Evan Hansen, and he’s mumbling his name, and it powers Connor up, it gives him enough breath left in his chest that he sits up, he presses two fingers into the back of his throat, and he forces the pills back up, counting a few of them in the bile, still light headed. He looks Evan in the eyes, his own crossing and uncrossing, making him look alien. “Call 911,” he says, voice slurred, needing to clutch onto this life with bloody fingertips if that was all he could give. The last chance came back, and that was all before he faded out to black. 

And then white, sterile hospital room surrounding, his body in the gown, in case he decides to hang himself in his jeans or something. His mom, her eyes red-rimmed, sitting on the end of it, holding her own pill bottle, and mumbling something as her head sways back and forth in disbelief. His father, barking at all the nurses that enter, that can’t they do more? Can’t they do better? And Zoe in a chair by the door, staring out the window, hand leaving a red print on her cheek like she hadn’t moved in hours. He sees them, finally, really sees them. Sees what this does. And beside him, he turns his head, and right where the demons should sit, right in the stool at his bedside is Evan Hansen, picking at the strings of plaster in his cast. And he thinks, maybe, maybe now, maybe with these people he dragged with him to the brink, maybe someone could see.

The counting demon speaks, it tells him that this is the first time he will be found. He waits to hear the other one, the one that screams, but Evan’s voice is there instead. “Hey…hey, sorry are you awake?” And when Connor gives a groggy nod, Evan says, “Welcome back.” Everyone in the room can breathe again, and tears release themselves from Cynthia’s eyes. Perhaps, it isn’t only Connor who feels like he’s gained a chance.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I will love you forever if you review. And just stay safe. Stay alive. You will be found. You will be seen. You will be loved. 
> 
> Once more, the masterpost of hotlines by country is https://www.google.ca/amp/codedredalert.tumblr.com/post/109005732295/helpline-masterlist/amp
> 
> I love you all, please give yourself a chance. Give the world a chance to be a place worth living in.


End file.
